Unwelcome Reminders! (Swearing alert!)

Oh, that’s just great!!

I picked up a notebook randomly to write a list for tomorrow, flicked through a few pages of old “to do” lists and chuckled at stuff I *still* haven’t done that was so important at the time, but now, really doesn’t matter and then……..

A page of tally marks when I was counting rows knitting the ‘boat cats’.

Then………..

A page with his handwriting.

Then………..

The numbers of George from the stop house when I spoke to him a few days after he went missing.
George told me “hang tight to that and hope it pulls him through” when he’d asked about his last txt to me, and I told him, he’d texted that he loved me and explained about the (supposed) depression as delicately as I could.

THEN…………

The list of stuff me and my daughter took with us when we went down and looked for him.
The numbers of people I had to contact with news because they were just as worried.
The list of possible places to go to.

And we did. Gods!! The miles I drove, and the miles my daughter walked along the tow paths, searching.
How her interest in all things boat and canal soared for having seen it for herself, and the questions she asked. Many I could answer, many others I told her she’d have to ask him. But she never saw him again, did she? The man she had seriously taken to and trusted with her affection and regard, trusted his affection and regard for her ffs…….and she doesn’t do that easily, I can tell you!

The texts and calls exchanged with his daughter as she worried along with us because her father was missing.
The strangers we spoke to.
The awful night in the car hidden between 2 skips in Daventry and how his daughter kept us company via msgs and planning the next day between us.
The way I dissolved at Stoke Bruern, sobbing, exhausted and so fucking worried, while my daughter walked first one way then the other along the canal for well over an hour.
The feeling of despair.
The way my vision blurred on the drive home.
And how I actually collapsed once we made it back.
How he was photographed out and about the sodding day after we got back, apparently collecting his post. When he was supposed to be too depressed to even text anyone, let alone have the get up and go to get a bus to fetch his post ffs!!! (as he later told me)

I really, seriously did not need that reminder.
The lists are now in the bin.

But how fucking DARE she tell me “love fades”!?!?! That I “was in a relationship that ended”. Oh really???

Is that what he told her had happened????

That is a fucking LIE!!!

Because he never ended the relationship. He never said goodbye even. His last words to me before he went missing were “I love you”.

Does that sound like “fading” to anybody with even half a brain cell????

A mere 3 weeks after his last text, a hunch…….an intuition…..sends me to plenty of fish. And there he is. And within 10 minutes of him knowing I knew, he took it down.
Guilt???? I fucking hope so!!!
Yes, that’s the morning I tried phoning him over and over again. Wouldn’t anyone have done the same???

He tried to excuse it away. Swore there was no-one else.

Gods, if he actually, genuinely liked her, how could he deny her existance like that???? FOR 6 MONTHS. Oh my fucking gods!!

That man is everything that gives men a bad name, personified!!

Nothing he says can be trusted. Not a single damn thing. Because if someone can lie so easily, and persistently, about the big stuff, the important stuff, you can bet they lie about everything.

My daughters say they watched him mentally destroy me in front of their eyes. Because…….my love and my experience wasnt a lie. And everything else going on could have been coped with if it wasn’t for what he did.

And what was between us wasn’t a lie either. That “heart connection” as I call it……..impossible to ignore, impossible to fake.

And I know how that kind of thing lingers because it is part of you. I have had to deal with that. I expect he has too. His words to me were “you’re right, there is a bond”. That was at the end of April.

But I pushed for the truth. Had been since the summer.

He didnt like that.

And black amex cards didnt even exist then, by the way. Not until 1999.

I am not upset. I am angry. But who wouldn’t be in the same situation?? I have every right to be angry. As do my daughters and friends who watched it happen. None of this is made up.

Now I am going to write my list for tomorrow, dammit!!